Sometimes it's tough being a fan of Apple technology, especially when the company falls on hard times; a shrinking budget for research and development has led to a lot of cancelled projects over the last few years, and some very cool technologies and services went the way of the dodo (assuming the dodo was, in fact, a largish handheld computer capable of handwriting recognition and Internet access). We wept when Newton was killed, we mourned the passing of lifetime free phone support, and we even wore black when OpenDoc finally got the axe. But few losses hit us more deeply than the passing of our beloved Claris Emailer, that splendid do-it-all email client that slices, dices, and makes Julienne fries. It was one of the first applications that could handle multiple email accounts with such ease, and as far as we know, it's still the only one that can access AOL email without relying on the AOL client software itself. (Yes, we still keep a couple of AOL emailer accounts active, primarily as a monument to times past and as a Living Spam Sculpture.) Emailer, to us, is what made the Mac the best email platform available.

Emailer was handed over to Apple when Claris became FileMaker Inc. and divested itself of all non-database-related products. Unfortunately, while Apple revamped ClarisWorks into the newly-cast AppleWorks, the other Claris products (including Emailer) were locked away with no official comment. The word on the street, though, was that Emailer was dead; several Apple employees were quoted saying as much. And so the world's Emailer fans continue to communicate using the same old versions, dreading the day when the next Mac OS update renders Emailer non-functional. It still mostly works under Mac OS 8.5.1-- thank heaven for small mercies.

But wait! What's this? A rumor in MacWEEK that Emailer is still alive and kicking? Sure, we've encountered rumors like that before-- the last one we heard around the water cooler was that Apple planned to incorporate Emailer-based email services into the Mac OS itself, though nothing's come of that so far. Still, this latest rumor is intriguing: some sources are reporting that Apple plans to merge Emailer into the next version of AppleWorks. That could make a strange kind of sense; after all, AppleWorks has a terminal-based communications module, so why not add true email capabilities as well? Heck, we'd buy AppleWorks for $99 just for Emailer alone, though we likely wouldn't have to; we bet upgrades from our existing ClarisWorks versions won't be quite that expensive. C'mon, Apple-- we know you're out there. Release a new, supported version of Emailer-- we don't care if it's part of AppleWorks, the Mac OS, or even Hypercard. We just want our Emailer.